The field of this invention is convenience devices for placement on a substrate or member to thereby hold it in place.
United States Patents:
Hirst shows a mechanism for adjustably supporting a load above it. Bergen, Miller, and the Schuyler patents relate to shock absorbing bumpers for ships at loading docks. Graves and Osborn relate to holding down a tarpaulin.
In agriculture it is sometimes necessary to fumigate a large area of soil. For that purpose an established practice is to place a tarpaulin over the area to be fumigated, and hold down the edges of the tarpaulin with whatever means are available in an effort to provide an effective gas seal for the area underneath.
In highway construction work it is common practice to employ portable signs that are supported upon the roadway to provide direction to travelers and workers. Since such signs have a large flat surface upon which the information is displayed, that same flat surface is necessarily exposed to the wind, which sometimes results in the sign being blown over.
My novel method of creating a hold-down weight against an uneven surface includes the steps of providing a plurality of sheets of elastomeric material each of which has at least one edge that is relatively straight, and which also has two openings a fixed distance apart; arranging the sheets into an elongated pile with the openings aligned; stringing a pair of cord-like members through the aligned openings; fastening the cord-like members with relatively low tension so that they are at least somewhat slack; and then laying the elongated pile upon the uneven surface such that the relatively straight edge of each sheet engages the uneven surface and a common transverse axis of the two openings of each sheet is at least generally parallel to the uneven surface.
My invention provides a novel weight strip including a plurality of substantially identical flat pad members each having a spaced pair of holes therethrough and each having a relatively straight support surface below the holes which is generally parallel to a common plane of the holes; a pair of cord-like members passing through the respectively corresponding holes in all of the pad members to arrange the pad members into a string; and securing means on the cord-like members to confine the pad members in a slack relationship so that when the support surfaces of various pad members of the weight strip are resting upon a substrate having an irregular surface the cord-like members may then bend to permit gaps to occur between some otherwise adjacent pad member edges.
According to the preferred form of my invention the flat pad members or sheets of elastomeric material are preferably cut from used automobile tires.
Thus the present invention provides a portable, economical, compact, relatively dull-edged weather resistant weight strip that is adaptable for use over uneven support surfaces.